Artie has a strange view of the story. Everything in the boy’s room was burned. It wasn’t just toys. And the reason everything got burned had nothing to do with being “real”. The rabbit only escaped because of the Nursery Fairy.

And those doing the burning don’t even imagine that any of the toys might be “real/alive”, which I suppose might be taken as a metaphor for reality blindness, except that a lot of the “toys”/constructs are taken for actual people or simply invisible to the weird-blind.

I think it is taking the right approach in assuming the authors know their source material and deviations are intentional. In the Skin Horse prime universe, the story ending is different, either because it always was or because the powers that be felt the moral needed changing.

I don’t think the story is different. What Artie’s saying is technically true. No, Artie just has a very bleak take on the tale.

It’s like some people say Romeo and Juliet is the greatest love story ever told and other people say Romeo and Juliet is a morality play about how teenagers are stupid and poor communication kills. (Hint: It’s the latter).

Eh, the Princess Bride has plenty of problems of its own, when you apply the same kind of critical thinking to it.

Westley leaves Buttercup and goes off to seek his fortune for no sufficiently explained reason. By the story’s own admission, Buttercup didn’t want him to go, he just kind of left because… he wanted a bunch of money in addition to love, I guess?

So he gets captured by pirates with a reputation for not leaving survivors, so Buttercup understandably mourns him as dead. He’s pressed into service in the crew, but eventually his chance comes to leave the ship. But he doesn’t. He keeps being a pirate – attacking innocent people and robbing them, if not outright killing them – for several years at least. He’s okay with such evil acts because it’ll get him that fortune he wants, I guess?

So Prince Humperdinck courts Buttercup, who isn’t interested because shes still broken up about Westley. But this is the prince we’re talking about, and the social pressure to marry him is enormous. Her family, her neighbors, every random stranger in every little town she’ll ever visit expects her to become princess. The entire nation is against her.

She could perhaps flee the country, but where would she go, and how would she live? And why bother? The Prince admits he’s not in it for love, and that it’s basically a marriage of political convenience. She’s promised a life of comfort, prestige, and the adoration of the nation, all just to become a beloved icon. Eventually, she relents.

Now, Westley is skulking around watching her secretly at this point. We know this because he’s on hand to immediately respond to her kidnapping, and knows everything about her impending marriage. But he’s being a selfish prick won’t even let her know that he’s still alive, because he’s mad that she didn’t choose to defy the will of the entire country and insist on dying a spinster maid, a burden to her poor farmer family, in order to honor his memory. She didn’t suffer enough for him.

So then he saves her from Humperdinck’s plot, but instead of revealing who he is and escaping with her immediately, he wastes time tormenting and mocking her out of petty bitterness while still hiding his identity, which directly causes them to get caught.

Once Buttercup recognizes him, all is instantly forgiven somehow. I guess it doesn’t matter that Westley is a robber and quite likely a murderer, or that he was cruel and selfish and hurtful toward her for no good reason, or that he put them in senseless danger, because she has her handsome farm boy back, and she always did enjoy watching him toil and sweat to satisfy her petty whims. They deserve each other, huh?

So then they get through the Fire Swamp, but uh oh, it’s Humperdinck, whoops. Westley decides to NOT do the sensible thing and retreat back into the swamp, instead drawing his sword and standing his ground stupidly against foes with ranged weapons. He mouths off about how they know the secrets of the Fire Swamp and can just live there until they can shake pursuit – instead of just going and actually DOING that.

Buttercup sees that the odds are against them, and tries to surrender herself. For some reason Westley doesn’t turn to the crossbowmen and say “The prince is lying to you! I’m not Buttercup’s kidnapper – I’m the one who rescured her from the assassins! Assasins hired by Humperdinck to kill her and make it look as though Gilder did it, as pretense for war!”

And also for some reason, Buttercup doesn’t chime in and say “Yes, that’s right! This man is my rescuer, and what he says is true! I overheard the assasins discussing their plans myself! The prince means to kill me! He has betrayed you! He has betrayed all of us – the entire country! Loyal men of Florin, do not betray your people for this murdering tyrant! Do your duty to your people, and put down your weapons!”

Instead, she just offers herself up with the hope that Westley will be spared if she does so. I guess she doesn’t realize the full extent of what’s going on. Westley, inexplicably, not only doesn’t tell her what’s going on, but doesn’t even tell her that the prince cannot be trusted to keep his end of her proposed bargain. If he had, she could have said, “Oh. Well, in that case, I insist that I be allowed to witness you deliver this man to his ship with my own eyes.”

And even the fact that Humperdinck couldn’t be trusted doesn’t make much sense. Why would he NOT just return Westley to his ship? Why not just take the deal? It gives him everything he wants, at no real cost. He’s already won, why complicate matters?

Although for me, the one thing about the movie that was truly unforgivable was that at no point did the grandfather, played by Peter Falk, pause in the doorway, turn back to his grandson, and say, “Just one more thing…”.

it wasn’t explicitly stated, but I thought the reason he went to make his fortune was he wanted to support Buttercup as a reasonably well-off guy, not a poor farmhand.

Also in the movie the reason he couldn’t retreat back into the fireswamp was the guy had crossbowmen with him and he couldn’t retreat faster than they could shoot him with crossbolts.

And the idea that the King would only send his most loyal guys who wouldn’t listen to a story about him betraying them seems to be a logical one. In the movie it was the six-fingered man (who was in on the whole plot) after all.

Yeah. Based on Romeo’s behavior at the beginning of the play, if the two families hadn’t been fighting, Romeo would have shacked up with another girl a week later and Juliet would have been heartbroken. Well, OR there would have been the medieval equivalent of a shotgun wedding, depending on circumstances.

Based on the behavior of everyone who wasn’t Tybalt, if Romeo had simply asked Capulet, “Your daughter and I seem to have fallen in love, may we please get married?”, the answer would have been “Oh, God, please yes, we need something to lock in this armistice! Next week OK with you?”, And Tybalt was Capulet’s bitch, so there’s your boring sappy love story.

Fortunately for the cause of Drama, we got the version where the teenagers were idiots.

I have come to view “R&J” as not a romantic tragedy but rather as a satiric piece about how two rich, spoiled brats plunge a city into a gang war and then get their just desserts in a comically botched fake suicide plot. I bet the Elizabethan commoners were laughing their butts off at the end.

Based on how little the “Simpsons” writers actually had to change when they parodied the end of “Hamlet,” I think the Elizabethans were also laughing themselves silly at the conclusion of that so-called tragedy.

Artie’s right. The Rabbit didn’t get burned because of the Nursery Fairy, but the Nursery Fairy only comes to rescue the toys that have been loved. So the Rabbit escaped because he was Real, and the toys (and books and sheets) that weren’t Real got burned. While the Boy basically forgot about them all.

The other thing is that it’s not every single toy that gets burned, only the ones that were in the bed with the Boy when he was sick (and not hte Skin Horse. If nonhumans get close to humans, the humans will destroy the nonhumans whenever they have something else going on in their lives, without much of a thought. This isn’t the Skin Horse’s fault, exactly, but it seems like becoming Real to a human, as opposed to becoming Real to everyone and the other animals, isn’t a great path forward.

Sometimes I forget: Inside Artie’s tall, hot, hominid body there’s still the mind (albeit brilliant) of a small, scared rodent packed full of survival instincts. And fire is a BIG BAD THING if you’re a rodent. He’s seeing much more than that right now, but I’d bet that this-is-burning tripped all sorts of rodentish alarms.

My daughter brought “The Velveteen Rabbit” home from her preschool this week (I swear this was a total coincidence). My husband, who didn’t know the story, is traumatised at the very thought. I cannot read the story without crying (never could). So, yeah, I’m with Artie! It’s a scary story!

We were told by various people that when the same daughter was diagnosed with a dust allergy, we’d have to get rid of all her soft toys. Thankfully the doctor gave them a reprieve. And her favourite one is machine-washable…

Since I have a dust allergy myself, I have to wonder about those “various people” who said your daughter would have to get rid of her toys. A “dust allergy” is actually an allergy to the mites that feed on the dust (and the “dust” is dead skin cells), and the most common place to find those dust mites is in bedding, carpet, and cloth-covered furniture. Yes, they will also be found in stuffed animals. But even for stuffed animals that are not machine washable, there are other effective ways to rid them of dust mites — such as freezing them (at 5°F or less for 16 hours), which kills 95% of the dust mites. Then simply run them through the dryer on low heat for 20 minutes or so to shake out the dead mites and fluff up the toys. You could also run them through the dryer on high heat for an hour, but most toys don’t respond well to being cooked at 180°F, and the freezing is more effective anyway.

Yeah, as another person with dust mite allergies – not being allowed any fluffy stuffed animals is bovine excrement.
Carpets, doilies and all that kind of stuff that just lies there accumulating dust are much worse.
Besides, most stuffed animals are moderately machine washable, cold water or without/a low dose of washing powder.
Make sure her room has tiles or something like it, and if possible, have wardrobes and other furniture that reaches to the floor so there’s no dust build up under or behind the furniture.

Got the same anti-mite “advice package” as a kid when my asthma came about, to wrap my entire room in plastic, all of it, pillows and all – oh, and absolutely burn all my books while I’m at it. Not in those exact words but to that exact effect. I’m not kidding. And back then we didn’t even have PCs, tablets and smartphones.

Thankfully my parents weren’t as deranged as apparently some of the doctors so I got to completely disregard all of it. Yes, that even includes some fluffy toys. And I was the kid who had even the zero-agent “control” spot react to the allergy test on my arm. And yet I never had any issues as a consequence – stayed out of fog, dust and other irritants as much as I reasonably could, used my inhaler whenever I needed it and that was that. A quarter of century later I think it’s fairly safe to conclude I’ll live anyway.

Remember that the crazy folks in charge aren’t the ones who’d need to practice what they preach, and you are the only defence your kids have against their lunacy. Oh… and I did see some of my toys thrown out on a completely different occasion once – to this day, it tears my heart to tiny little shreds and makes me queasy to remember it. Something cracked that day…

Isn’t he supposed to be super-intelligent? It’s blatantly obvious that non-humans who refuse to integrate with society will come into conflict with society. If you read it that way, it’s a cautionary tale against non-human segregationism.